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Tuesday, September 29, 2026

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Toll roads in the sky

Asia's elevator boom favors maintenance and modernization providers, with Otis deriving nearly 90% of operating profit from after-sales services rather than new installations.

OTIS $25B
Asian Century Stocks 2 clicks

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@convequity

Convequity on X

Jeff Dean’s departure is a seminal moment for $GOOG I’ve been watching this closely and the picture keeps getting clearer — and more concerning. Google is still treated as the safe consensus AI bet. Full-stack ecosystem, consumer reach, TPU muscle. But the competitive status of its frontier models looks increasingly dubious. The one-way talent flow tells the story. Google has seen massive outflows to OpenAI and Anthropic (reports put the numbers in the high hundreds to over a thousand in recent periods) while inbound from those labs remains tiny. This is not normal churn. It signals a structural talent problem that shows no sign of being fixed anytime soon. Jeff Dean leaving with Sanjay Ghemawat, Quoc Le and Oriol Vinyals, while Demis Hassabis steps back from day-to-day leadership, is the clearest signal yet that the research edge has peaked. Top talent does not want to waste cycles inside a large, conservative organization when the progress window is this narrow. We’ve flagged Google’s cultural and leadership issues in our recent rebalancing work. This just cross-validates it hard. What’s especially striking is the internal dynamic. All signs point to Koray Kavukcuoglu having been central to the environment that produced these outcomes — yet he has now risen to Chief AI Architect and the unchallenged operational AI leader, reporting directly to Pichai. The research org is fraying rapidly while the executive who oversaw much of that period moves up the ranks. That is a strange incentive structure. Large orgs struggle to deliver breakthrough AI. Talent density, bold vision and nimble execution matter more than scale. Meta rebuilt around an independent lab. SpaceX is doing the same with xAI. Google may eventually follow, but the current setup still seems unwilling to fully accept the reality. That said, the TPU and infra side continues to execute well with far less leakage. The competitive edge is shifting toward infrastructure, chips and consumer distribution — not frontier model leadership. This remains the biggest news of the week for a reason.
@junkbondinvest 1 click

junkbondinvestor on X

Strategy ($MSTR) has $15bn of preferreds, all yielding 10%+ Here's a quick summary of the situation > ~$22bn of debt + preferred vs. ~$54bn of BTC > Current interest/dividend obligation is now $1.75bn+ per year > $6bn+ of converts (1st tranche putable beginning in '27); all busted > Saylor beginning to sell $BTC and has a $4bn USD reserve which funds 2+ years of fixed obligations > Most junior preferred, $STRD, trading at 64 cents / 15.8% > Most senior preferred, $STRF, trading at 96 cents / 10.6% Is there a relative value trade here? My thoughts below

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Quick Value #332 - Gentherm (THRM)

Gentherm’s Oct. 1 Reverse Morris Trust with Modine adds commercial and off-highway operations, leaving THRM at 7.4x pro forma EBITDA with…

MOD $9.7B
Value Don't Lie 4 clicks

On’s Premium Playbook

On Holdings targets premium growth through 2029, using LightSpray soccer cleats and higher pricing, with ASPs rising from $145 to $170…

ONON $11B
TSOH Investment Research 5 clicks

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